Wednesday, 4 June 2014

The Birthday Cake

What is it about a birthday cake that makes it so special?

Let's do a little exercise, and I am not talking about the one you have to do after eating the cake. Yeah, talk about pros and cons! But anyway, for this exercise, close your eyes and think about a birthday cake. What do you see? Do you see your favorite, tempting cake? Yes, probably. But is it just the cake? When you think of a birthday cake, you see yourself, happy, surrounded by smiling and laughing people, friends and family with party hats, and you see yourself holding the knife, ready to blow out the candles, making a wish and wishing it to come true. Yup! You see your own birthday. At least I do. That's what makes a birthday cake so special. It is a maker of beautiful loving memories, an agent of your day.

It was my birthday yesterday. You guessed it! That's the precursor of this post and I am all about having a rule that mandates having at least one birthday cake.

Sure it's great to be surprised with a birthday cake at midnight by your friends, or at work by your colleagues or just ordering a cake for yourself from your favorite bakery, but baking your own birthday cake isn't too shabby either. And don't be afraid if you are a newbie at baking, just like me. So what if you screw up a couple of cakes and your cake gets finally ready only minutes before you are supposed to be cutting it. If anything, you should be getting a pat, or even two at the back for being such brave risk takers on your own birthday.

Here's what my 'final' cake looked like. For a baker who is not perfect, well, not yet anyway, this was a lovely looking birthday cake that tasted good.

Vanilla Cake

And the best part is the fun my cousins, Nidhi and Amrita, and I had screwing up and baking cakes throughout the day. It was like a festival. My mother was more worried than me about my cake. I had initially decided to make a mango-butterscotch cake. But after two trials, adjusting the batter consistency and everything we thought could have been wrong that the cake wouldn't bake through properly, we gave it up. Although I must say that we tasted the God-knows-what's-wrong mango-butterscotch cakes and they tasted yum!
Then we decided to make my tried and tested vanilla cake recipe so I at least had a cake to cut in the evening. And thank god it turned good.

I am not sharing the recipe of vanilla cake in this post because, like I said, I am not a perfect baker and anything I post in this blog quite simply has to be perfect. I wrote this post just because I wanted to share my initial attempts at baking with you all and make a memory of my birthday.

I hope to see you soon with improved baking and that won't take me another birthday, I promise.